Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Digger for the ColecoVision -- Reviewed!

During
the early-to-mid 1980s, Dig Dugand Mr. Do!inspired a number of tunnel-digging
imitators, including Sega’s obscure Thunderground
(1983) for the Atari 2600 and First Star Software’s popular Boulder Dash (1984) for a variety of
consoles and computers. One of the more blatant copycats was Windmill
Software’s Digger, a Canadian
computer game developed by Rob Sleath in 1983 for the IBM PC.

Guiding
a motorized Digger Mobile around the screen, players tunnel underground to
scoop up emeralds (similar to the cherries in Mr. Do!), creating mazes in the process. As you gather emeralds,
little creatures called Nobbins will chase you through the maze pathways.
Impatient Nobbins sometimes turn into Hobbins, which can burrow through maze
walls (similar to the monsters in Mr. Do!).
You can throw a rock bullet at the enemies (similar to the ball in Mr. Do!, but it doesn’t bounce around),
but it takes a few seconds for the Digger Mobile to reload once a bullet has
been fired.

Digger is clearly more of a Mr. Do! clone than a Dig Dug wannabe. This is especially
evident regarding bags of gold that are positioned at various points around the
screen. These are like the apples in Mr.
Do! (as opposed to the rocks in Dig
Dug) in that you can push them across the screen. And you can walk under
the bags of gold to drop them on enemies, while making sure to get out of the
way so you don’t get crushed. One thing that sets Digger apart from both of its more famous progenitors is that
dropped bags break open to reveal gold that you can scoop up for extra points,
a welcome feature.

Monsters
in Digger spawn from the top/right corner
of the screen. After you kill a certain number of monsters, a special prize cherry
will appear in this area. If you grab the prize, you can turn the tables on the
enemies for approximately 15 seconds (which decreases in later rounds of play).
As such, the monsters will now run away from you, a la the ghosts in Pac-Man. The current level ends when
you’ve grabbed all the emeralds or killed all the monsters, another nod to Mr. Do!

Unlike
Mr. Do!, there are no letters
spelling out EXTRA for an extra life. However, you do get an extra life for
every 20,000 points you score.

Compared
to the original Digger computer game,
the ColecoVision port plays about the same, but there are some visual simplifications.
The playfield for the ColecoVision game is colored with thick vertical stripes
while the original has a more textured look with thin, wavy, and diagonal lines.
The multi-colored Digger Mobile, Nobbins, and Hobbins of the computer
semi-classic have been replaced by mono-colored versions of same, which once
again evokes Mr. Do! as the arcade
version had multi-colored characters while the ColecoVision port had mono-colored
characters.

Like
many video games, both versions of Digger
make use of classic musical compositions. During the standard action,“Popcorn” by
Gershon Kingsley plays. After you grab the bonus prize, you’ll hear Gioachino
Rossini’s “William Tell Overture.” When you get killed by a monster or squashed
by a bag of gold, Frédéric Chopin’s “Piano Sonata No. 2 in B flat Minor” (a.k.a.
“The Funeral March”) will commemorate your death, complemented by a gravestone
that rises from the ground.

Regarding
sound effects, when you gather up emeralds in the ColecoVision port, it sounds
exactly like picking cherries in the ColecoVision version of Mr. Do!

Overall,
Digger is a cute, challenging game
that sounds good and will entertain most any maze fan. It has solid controls,
smooth difficulty progression, and a few differences (including altered enemy A.I.) that set it apart from similar
games. Even though I’ve played a variety of tunnel-digging games countless
times, I find myself playing Digger
again and again to try and beat my high score.

Since
Mr. Do! is readily available on the
ColecoVision (it’s one of the more common post-launch titles and is only worth
around $8 loose), Digger, which is
packaged in an retro-style box with instruction manual, isn’t exactly a must-own
for the system. However, collectors and diehard fans of the genre will want to hop
online and grab a copy.

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About Me

A freelance writer, I'm the author of the Classic Home Video Games series, The 100 Greatest Console Video Games: 1977-1987, Encyclopedia of KISS, and other books. I've had articles published in numerous magazines and newspapers, including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Filmfax, Fangoria, AntiqueWeek, The Writer, Mystery Scene, and more.
Contact me at brettw105 AT sbcglobal.net.